The growth of poker globally

The growth of poker has been astonishing. A game that used to be the sole property of smoky casinos and Las Vegas is now regularly played by millions of people around the world. Thanks to the explosion of online poker there are countless players riffling virtual chips right now who almost certainly would have never have discovered the game otherwise.

When did you come on-board?

PokerStars commissioned a heat map to track that year-on-year growth to show when and where poker exploded onto the scene. For instance, you can see that North America is still enjoying a rapid rise in 2006 in the years following Moneymaker's momentous WSOP win. The growth continues, but just not at the same rate, while other regions and countries, such as Eastern Europe, Russia and Brazil pick up the baton.

Although Americans would still claim poker as their own, there's no denying that poker in 2013 is truly a global game with more than 100,000,000,000 hands dealt online at PokerStars.

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